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RIO DE JANEIRO—As certification nears for the Boeing 737-10, Canada’s WestJet believes there’s a good chance Boeing will deliver the first aircraft to the Calgary-based airline by year-end.
WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech told Aviation Week during the IATA AGM that everything the carrier is hearing from Boeing and “what the FAA is communicating, this all converges to a certification in the fourth quarter.” Recently, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said he expects the remaining variants of the 737 MAX to be certified by year-end, with the -7 gaining approval first, followed by the -10.
Six of WestJet’s 737-10s are sitting on the tarmac, waiting to be delivered, von Hoensbroech said, adding at the moment Boeing’s delivery schedule begins in December. He said in addition to FAA certification, Transport Canada also needs to certify the aircraft. But he thinks the aircraft should begin flying in the first quarter of 2027. Aviation Week’s Fleet Discovery database shows WestJet has 97 737-10s and 20 737-8s on order.
Alongside the expected first delivery of the 737-10 this year, WestJet is also accepting deliveries of 17 737-8s. However, the carrier’s fleet count will remain flat as it retires 737-700s.WestJet and other Canadian airlines have indefinitely suspended flights to Cuba, and those reductions, along with a 25% drop in demand between Canada and the US last year that has not returned, exacerbated by higher fuel prices, has resulted in WestJet opting to accelerate the retirement of the -700s.
There’s not a definitive date for the aircraft’s retirement, WestJet’s CEO said. “We always assumed that we would retire them until the end of the decade, and this may now move forward; but also, I would be surprised if this goes super-fast.” The carrier has 32 737-700s in service, and three inactive aircraft, according to Fleet Discovery.
Most of the 737-700s are owned and written off, von Hoensbroech said, “So it’s good capacity to play with, depending on how the market develops.”
WestJet placed a record order with Boeing late in 2025 for 60 737-10s and seven 787-9s, which was a doubling of the carrier’s widebody fleet. The carrier capped its widebody fleet at seven aircraft in late 2022 and based all the jets in Calgary. During the last couple of years, the company has studied the possibility of expanding its twin-aisle fleet.
“Post-pandemic, we put this network on its feet, put all the widebodies in Calgary, built some connection banks so we could properly feed them, and since then we connected Calgary to the world, which was an absolute game changer,” von Hoensbroech said.
“We figured we could probably use a few more, and that’s why we put the order in,” he added. “[The 787 orderbook is] pretty congested, and it takes a long time between order and getting them delivered, so there was a bit of urgency.”
WestJet expects deliveries of those aircraft in the early 2030s.
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